Banda Aceh, January 18, 2005. Acehnese have protested at the Australian prime minister’s attempt to link his country’s donations to the tsunami-hit province with a clemency appeal for two Australians on death row.
Photograph: Max Blenkin/AAP

Enraged citizens from the tsunami-ravaged province of Aceh, Indonesia, have started a movement to collect coins to “pay back Australia” in a backlash against provocative statements by the Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott.

Venting their anger on Twitter under the hashtag #KoinUntukAustralia, or Coins for Australia, Acehnese have taken to the social network in droves to lambast the Australian leader.

Posting a photo of a 1,000 rupiah coin (worth less than 10 cents in Australia) stuck to a piece of paper with six zeros cheekily added next to it, one Twitter user Nikita Paradisa asked: “Is it enough? Ur bank account please, Mr Tony Abbott.”

As diplomatic efforts have ramped up to save Australians Andrew Chan, 31, and Myuran Sukumaran, 33, from imminently facing an Indonesian firing squad, Abbott controversially suggested that Indonesia should “reciprocate” for the $1bn pledged in tsunami aid by sparing the lives of the two Australians.

A notoriously proud people, the Acehnese say the Australian prime minister should be ashamed of his comments and they will gladly return the money.

“We never asked for their aid, they offered it to us as courtesy,” Dina Handayani, 27, a Banda Aceh resident and civil servant told the Guardian.

Conceived initially between friends during a heated discussion at an Aceh coffee shop, postgraduate student Burhanuddin Alkhairy, 26, told the Guardian his friends started the Twitter hashtag as a way to get their message across to the Australia PM.

“We regret the link the Australian prime minister made between tsunami aid and the execution of the drug dealers, they are two very different things,” Alkhairy said. “This is our moral protest to his statement.”

The Acehnese, he said, were angry that Abbott would suggest that aid pledged after the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami – a disaster that killed more than 170,000people in their province alone – would be offered conditionally and retroactively.

Alkhairy says his group never intended to take to streets and actually collect coins but the movement has inspired others to do just that.

One Muslim Student Action Union group on Friday set up a post in a main street in the capital to collect donations.

“We are ready to return the funds, and we ask that the death penalty continues to save the young generation of Aceh and Indonesia,” said Aziz Darliz, a member of the student group.

Pictures on Twitter showed that collections continued in Banda Aceh on Saturday with volunteers holding boxes with pictures of the Australian flag stuck on the side asking motorists for donations.

“This movement needs to be serious,” said annoyed civil servant Handayani, “It should not just be happening on social media but in real life. We should collect the coins and send them to Abbott.”

Australia’s foreign minister, Julie Bishop, has attempted to smooth over any fallout from Abbott’s comments, but in Jakarta the remarks have not been well received either. “Threats are not part of diplomatic language,” was the spiky reply from the foreign ministry earlier this week.

“We do not respond to statements that are emotional, by nature threatening. No,” the Indonesian foreign minister, Retno Marsudi, told reporters at the presidential palace on Friday.

Indonesia has been forced to justify its use of the death penalty, arguing that capital punishment is in line with international law and is necessary to counter the country’s purported “drug emergency”.

Sentenced to death for their role in the Bali Nine heroin trafficking ring, Chan and Sukumaran are next in line to be shot dead by an Indonesian firing squad. The executions were postponed last week, but officials have stressed the delay is only temporary.

Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, said on Friday the executions were delayed for technical reasons only, while the attorney general has emphasised that “nothing whatsoever” will prevent them from going ahead.

Indonesians have been gathering to collect coins for Australia after Tony Abbott linked aid after the 2004 tsunami to calls for clemency for two Australians on death row. With Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran facing the death penalty for drug smuggling, Abbott said Australia felt 'let down' for its post-tsunami generosity